Before she died in December 2016, Bon Scott's great love Silver Smith sent me two pieces of writing which give tremendous insight into both Bon Scott's private world and the dynamic he had with other members of AC/DC. She never wrote anything else. This is the second part. The first part can be read here. Published with kind permission of her son, Sebastian.

I’d spent a decade around musicians and bands in all stages of development, in Australia, the United States and London, from raw beginnings and failures to the ultra successful. There was a common thread with all these people: their taste was usually wide and often very different from their own style; and there was always interest and excitement in new changes, new albums by their contemporaries, plus historic blues, bluegrass, country, R&B, etc. We’d sit around for hours on the floor drinking tea, smoking dope, occasionally snorting [heroin] and enjoying hearing something for the first time, discussing and dissecting. No wonder Bon came to [my flat at] Gloucester Road in London as often as he could. He must have been starving for music.He and I both had very similar tastes and musical backgrounds. We loved distinctive singers of any style, beautiful harmonies, and of course songs from the radio in our youth and childhood. We had a lot of fun trying to outdo each other with remembering lyrics to Johnny Horton, Everly Brothers, Gene Pitney and Hank Williams.According to Bon, in the band no one was allowed to play or listen to anything but AC/DC although Angus Young had some Chuck Berry tapes. I had never come across this before. There was an atmosphere of AC/DC versus the rest of the world, and they were suspicious of everyone including press, other bands, music business people, and seemingly anyone who wasn’t from the western suburbs of Sydney. Apart from Angus’s stage uniform, they had no interest in style or fashion, sticking to denim and snot, pretty much, and I was amazed to find out later the band had its origins in glam rock, as per David Bowie and Marc Bolan.

AC/DC with Radio Luxembourg DJ Ken Evans, London, 1976

I had been away from Australia for three years at this point and had no idea how successful AC/DC were as well as no idea of who the new bands were in Australia. Because of this, I made a terrible faux pas the very first time I met them. Bon and I were picked up in a small van going somewhere on AC/DC business. They were obviously not expecting me to be with Bon, and the atmosphere was chilly. No one spoke. No introductions were made, and there was an odour of eau de B.O. in the back of the dark grotty van. Capital Radio (the only station in London that played rock at that time) was coming through the speakers and was broadcasting a new, never-played-before single.I had a good ear for picking commercial hits even if they weren’t my style, recognising a good hook and singalong chorus, and this one had it all, as well as a strong link to the English obsession with cricket and really clean production. So attempting to break through the ice I said, “Wow! That’s clever. Straight to number one!” or something similar, and the temperature plunged another 20 degrees. It was AC/DC’s arch enemy Sherbet, who I had never heard of. I had no idea what crime I had committed. Bon just gave me a look to indicate, “I’ll tell you later.” I was bewildered as to why on earth Bon would think riding in the van was a good way for me to meet them. They didn’t seem to enjoy it any more than I did.

In their company I always felt really uncomfortable, as though I’d landed on another planet. They were all very young except for Bon, and had a very juvenile ‘use them and abuse them’ attitude to female fans. The only literature they read were comics and ‘stick books’. They were never overtly rude or unkind to me, and in fact on a few occasions when things got a bit out of hand (overly excited drunken fans and lack of security) Malcolm Young and Angus Young were both fiercely gallant and protective of me. I came to realise to my surprise that, despite their misgivings about me, I was considered part of their ‘gang’ – at least at that particular moment.I never intruded on the band, made a point of staying out of the way, and after my Sherbet faux pas never ever voiced an opinion on anything. I’m guessing here, but the number of AC/DC gigs over the years I went to was less than a dozen. I was always inspired seeing them. The energy they generated and expended was ridiculous; the audience totally captivated. In their heyday AC/DC were at the top of the game when it came to live performance.

Offstage, the atmosphere around Malcolm and Angus was always tense, no one wanting to get on their wrong side. I never heard them laugh properly, although they had sneering down to a fine art. Mark Evans was clean and fresh, a nice boy, and Phil Rudd was okay when not directly in Malcolm’s or Angus’s presence. Their manager, Michael Browning, was an older version of the Youngs in manner. He seemed to take an instant dislike to me, which persisted even after it became obvious that his sister Coral and I were becoming good friends and got on like the proverbial house on fire.On tour Malcolm and Angus usually stayed in their rooms, playing guitar, and had no interest in what was outside, no matter what city in the world they were in. Bon went to bookshops, markets and art galleries, buying the dozens of postcards he sent to people. He was the most prolific letter writer I’ve ever come across, even surpassing my mother, the family chronicler.

AC/DC, 1976

On one Australian tour the last gig was Perth, and we were leaving the following night to return to England. I went to the gig with Isa to take care of her and protect her from the young girl fans and from her own naivete. She loved every second of it. Bon didn’t come back to the hotel; not a surprise as he had a lot of catching up to do, and at breakfast the next morning there was only Phil around. He said he was going sailing on the Perth River and asked if I wanted to come. We hired a little idiot-proof catamaran. It was a real fun day and a contrast to the normal routine. Phil was always more laidback and easygoing than the Youngs.Both being completely amateur sailors, we made mistakes, got drenched a few times, laughed a lot, got sunburnt, and went back to the hotel thinking we still had three hours before the flight to a cold, cold London. The band and Browning were in the lobby scowling when we arrived – there’d been a cock-up about the time. Bon had packed for me and kept out a change of clothes, but it was a horrible long-haul flight back. I didn’t have anything with me I would normally take on a 28-hour flight into winter and my skin and hair were caked in salt. Phil had to wear his sailing clothes. Bon was fine, but the Youngs were really angry with me and also with Phil.

AC/DC and Coral Browning

Apparently, to their way of thinking, we had committed some terrible breach of their etiquette by spending the day together. This was all so weird. To rub more salt into the wound, when we got to the airport we had to sit around for three hours before the flight. No one spoke to Bon, Phil or me for the entire flight or on arrival in London. This was the power of the Youngs.A year or so down the track when they were touring America relentlessly (one day off a fortnight if they were lucky) Bon still did all the press on his own, and Phil was still doing all the driving. Malcolm and Angus were too insular to do any of the publicity and Bon was a natural. Phil had reached exhaustion point. Bon, who normally kept his head down in the band and did what he was told, was upset and worried about Phil, and really angry that no one else seemed to care about it. But he didn’t speak up. They were definitely the most success-driven band that I’ve ever come across.

Silver Smith, 2006

In the early days of their conquest of Britain and Europe, Michael Browning and his wife Julie rented a cottage in Mayfair, entertained [Australian TV personality] Molly Meldrum, and flew back and forth on Concorde to the States. The boys were on 50 pounds a week (which didn’t even cover Bon’s Scotch bill) and the rest of the band lived in dreary houses in Barnes and then Fulham. Michael’s sister Coral had been a music publicist and artist manager in London for quite a few years, and her opinion was well respected by the journos from Melody Maker, NME and Sounds, the weekly rock rags. She only represented artists and bands she liked and believed in, and had a lot of integrity. In the opinion of people who were around back then she was a huge influence on AC/DC’s early success, because of her hard work and reputation with the press. She was on a shitty wage, too, and had dropped her other artists to help her brother Michael. He had no contacts and a brusque, rude manner, and she had the respect of everyone in the business.Bon, Coral and I got on really well. She was sophisticated, smart, and more importantly, our age. Like others along the band’s road to success, she was dumped unceremoniously by AC/DC with no respect or recognition for the enormous part she had played in breaking the band in Britain and Europe.

“BEDLAM IN BELGIUM" (1983)​​This is a massively underrated barnstormer off the much-maligned (unfairly, I think) Flick Of The Switch. The album was missing Mutt Lange, but the Youngs did have his very capable engineer, Tony Platt, as co-producer in the studio at Compass Point in the Bahamas. Tony’s a real pro. Flick also features the slamming “Nervous Shakedown”, as heavy as a George Foreman uppercut, echoes of which can be heard on “Rock or Bust” off AC/DC’s most recent album of the same name.But what I find most interesting about “Bedlam In Belgium” is that it’s based on a fracas that broke out on stage in Kontich, Belgium, in 1977, involving Bon Scott, the rest of the band, and the local authorities. AC/DC had violated a noise curfew and things got hairy. An excellent account of it can be read here: http://acdcbelgium.blogspot.com.au/2013/02/bedlam-in-kontich-1977-story-behind.html and here: http://acdcbelgium.blogspot.com.au/2008/11/bedlam-in-belgium-from-eye-witness.html.

Brian Johnson, more than half a decade later, wrote the lyrics with such tactility (the song carries a Young/Young/Johnson credit); almost as if he was the one getting walloped by the Belgian police:

He gave me a crack in the back with his gunHurt me so bad I could feel the blood run

Bon-esque! Unfortunately for Brian, he was removed from lyric-writing duties from The Razors Edge (1990) onwards. All songs up to and including 2008’s Black Ice are Young/Young compositions. Rock Or Bust (2014), missing Malcolm, who died in 2017, was also credited as Young/Young.

Post-1980 is not my favourite AC/DC era but “Spellbound” really stands as a lasting monument to the genius of Mutt Lange, a man whose finely tuned ear and attention to detail filed the rough edges of Vanda & Young–era AC/DC and turned this commercially underperforming band for Atlantic Records into one of the biggest in the world with Highway To Hell (1979) and Back In Black (1980).On “Spellbound” AC/DC sounds as majestic as it does bombastic. Lange just amplifies the band's natural power an extra notch. It’s crisp sounding, laden with dynamics and builds awesomely when Angus launches into his solo.

“Spellbound” is the closer on For Those About To Rock We Salute You, the last album Lange did with AC/DC, so chronologically it’s a significant song; it marks the end of an important era. For Those About To Rock was an unhappy experience for a lot of people. There was a lot of blood being spilled behind the scenes. It went to number one in the US but commercially was a massive disappointment after the performance of Back In Black. Much of the blame lies at the feet of Atlantic Records, then under Doug Morris, who made the decision to exhume an album they’d shelved in 1976, Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap, and release it in-between Back In Black and For Those About To Rock. Ironically Morris now heads up Sony, AC/DC’s new home.In The Youngs (2013), Phil Carson, who signed AC/DC to Atlantic, calls it “one of the most crass decisions ever made by a record-company executive” and believes it undermined sales of For Those About to Rock. I think he’s right.

“GIMME A BULLET”(Powerage, 1978)​This was the song that began my personal Conradian journey into the music of Bon Scott and the Young brothers. It opens my 2013 book, The Youngs: The Brothers Who Built AC/DC, as it was the song that, at a crucial juncture in my life, connected me with AC/DC on an emotional and physical level I’d never experienced before, and it made me a fan.After the book came out in Australia, I gave a lift one night to Mark Evans, AC/DC’s bass player from 1975–77. We had just visited AC/DC drummer Tony Currenti at his pizzeria in Penshurst. My daughter Billie, Mark and I drove through the western suburbs of Sydney listening to songs off Powerage, Highway To Hell and Let There Be Rock. It was surreal: driving around midnight, AC/DC cranked up full volume like something out of Wayne’s World, with a guy who used to be in AC/DC in the back seat, singing along with Billie and me. I’ll never forget it.

I dedicatedThe Youngsto Mark, Tony and late Atlantic Records executive Michael Klenfner. Mark told me he’d gone away after reading The Youngs and re-listened to Powerage. He’d been in an adjoining studio playing with another band when some of it was recorded andGeorge Younghad even borrowed his guitar (asCliff Williamshad had visa problems entering Australia).After re-listening to the album, Mark was convinced George Young had played bass on the album (there are previously unpublished photos inThe Youngsfrom inside the studio of George playing bass with Angus and Malcolm). Perhaps that was why the bass on “Gimme A Bullet” was so good and so much notier than Cliff’s usual contributions. Some of the bass on the album could well be Cliff, who eventually arrived in Australia and went into the studio–his name appears on the album and the official line is that he was the bass player. EngineerMark Opitzinsists it was Cliff and Cliff himself says he played on the whole album. But, for listeners at least, whose bass playing finally ended up being used on each track in the final analysis is up for debate.

Phil Rudd, George Young, Malcolm Young, Angus Young

Listen to it yourself and decide. I've written a whole separate story about the bass onPowerage, which you can read here. There’s a history of George Young playing uncredited bass on AC/DC records. Personally, I think it’s one of their greatest songs, notable for the lack of a solo from Angus Young (though the great Filippo Olivieri aka Solo Dallas does a great version with a solo)--and, as I write inThe Youngs, it stopped me from doing something stupid at a weak moment. So it has personal resonance and significance to me; the best music always does. Powerage, 40 years old this year, is unquestionably the band’s masterpiece.

Over the five or so years I spent writing two books on AC/DC by far the most rewarding experience was getting to know and become friends with Tony Currenti, an old friend of Bon Scott's and the drummer on AC/DC’s first album, the 1975 Australian release of High Voltage.In 2012, 37 years on from AC/DC's debut record, I managed to track down Tony at his pizzeria in Penshurst, southern Sydney: Tonino's. It didn’t take much detective work. I found him on Facebook. He had about 50 friends.

Tony interviewed on Italian TV

Recording High Voltage, 1974

Tony hadn’t spoken to any author, ever. I couldn’t believe my luck. By his own account this avuncular 67-year-old Italian-Australian was asked to join AC/DC twice. He’d played on records that had sold millions (High Voltage--the Australian and U.S. versions --T.N.T, ’74 Jailbreak, Backtracks).But at the time I met him for various reasons he hadn’t touched a drum kit since 1977, after giving away music to start a family and a business.He formed a small but significant part of AC/DC history – truly an incredible tale – and it was my special privilege to tell his story. What was better, however, is everything that came after my first book on the band was published.

Recording in Spain

Handling drumsticks for the first time in 37 years. Thanks, Noel Taylor

It has brought me so much personal satisfaction to see Tony finally get the acknowledgment he deserves from fans around the world. Some of those remarkable fans, including You Am Idrummer Rusty Hopkinson, banded together in 2014 and bought Tony a new set of Pearl drums when they heard that his old Ludwig set was unplayable.When he appeared on stage with me at the Sydney Writers' Festival that same year he was a crowd favourite. Wherever he goes in the world, no one fails to be touched by his easygoing charm and complete humility.After some tentative steps back into the live scene, and tips from former AC/DC drummer Noel Taylor, Tony's first proper gig in 38 years was at The Bridge Hotel, Sydney, in 2014 withThe Choirboys: a truly magical moment for anyone who was there to see him play the song “High Voltage”. Tony was as nervous as hell and showing every sign of that nervousness when he first got up to play, but once the band kicked into gear, he was away. He hasn't looked back since.

He began playing weekend concerts regularly with Australian AC/DC tribute bandsLet There Be BonandDirty Deeds, started amassing thousands of new friends on Facebook (well over 4000, including his own tribute page), and in July/August 2015 he played his first European shows with tribute bands in Italy, England and Spain. In the space of five years he's now played hundreds of shows. What this man has achieved during his second wind as a drummer – after four decades away from the stage – has been immense.It's certainly not lost on parochial Italians that Tony is the only full-blooded Italian to have ever played for AC/DC, so I've been super proud to see him get great coverage in the Italian press, sell out shows in Sicily and on the European mainland, and get repeat invitations to come back and do it all over again, year after year. In Australia, meanwhile, typically, we are slow to embrace our musical history. When I pitched Tony's story to the ABC's Australian Story, for example,they expressed zero interest. Radio silence.

With Anthony Stocqueler and Mark Bradbury from Let There Be Bon. Stocqueler and Bradbury travelled hundreds of kilometres from their homes outside Sydney to help Tony get back his drumming skills

In Scotland with Slovakian AC/DC fan Peter Pis who made T-shirts for Tony and former AC/DC bass player Mark Evans

Outside of music, Tony can still be found most nights at Tonino’s making supreme pizzas, and that’s what makes him great. He’s free of the sort of ego that makes most former rock stars unbearable company. Even when people spell or pronounce his name wrong, which they do constantly (I cannot understand why, it's really not hard), he just shrugs and laughs.Tony's not perfect. There are some things about him that frustrate me – he won't give up cigarettes, has resisted my attempts to introduce the She's Got Balls (meatballs), Soul Stripper (chilli) and Crabsody In Blue (seafood) line of pizzas, and is far, far too nice to ask for what he wants, so unscrupulous people in the music and music-festival industries shamefully continue to take advantage of him financially – but that is who he is. I accept there are some things about him you just can't change. The arc of Tony’s story really is a movie waiting to happen: as good as ​Billy Elliott, Searching for Sugar Man or The Full Monty. I don’t think you could get a better immigrant tale. It has everything you could ask for and just happens to involve the biggest rock band in the world.He migrated to Australia from Sicily in 1967 and learned to play drums by playing spoons on his piano accordion and any spare chairs he could find. True story. That he then went on to play with AC/DC really is something from the realm of science fiction. You couldn’t make it up.Tony isn’t in AC/DC today because he was fiercely loyal to a group of “wogs,” as he calls them, known as Jackie Christian & Flight who were an Albert Productions recording act and had a couple of songs written for them by George Young, one called “Love", the other called “The Last Time I Go To Baltimore.”

With his doppelganger George Young recording High Voltage

They also played the music for Ray Burgess’s huge Australian hit, “Love Fever.” Jackie Christian & Flight thought they were on the cusp of greatness, but Tony picked the wrong band. His Italian passport didn’t help either. If he’d joined AC/DC and gone to England, it would have meant he’d have to stop in Rome. There he would have been conscripted into the Italian army for military service.So he turned down AC/DC. He has no regrets. And why would he? He played on most of the best songs on High Voltage, including the single. He played on Stevie Wright’s classic epic, “Evie” (that’s him on Part III), and “Black Eyed Bruiser.” He played on stage with AC/DC at Chequers in Goulburn Street, Sydney, in 1975. He laid down the drums for John Paul Young’s “I Hate the Music” and “Yesterday’s Hero.” He was George Young’s favourite session drummer and so many of Tony’s tracks are now on AC/DC releases and box sets that have sold millions of copies. ’74 Jailbreak, an EP which came out in 1984, has five songs on it. Three of them feature Tony’s drumming.Tony only got $35 an hour for his session work and that was enough for him. All he ever wanted was to meet the Youngs again, especially George, but he didn't get that chance. George and Malcolm passed away in 2017.So my fervent wish is that Angus Young picks up the phone and makes an old man happy. Tony Currenti is living music history and deserves adequate recognition not from fans, who have already taken him to their hearts, but AC/DC itself. He’s not after money. He’s far, far too modest for that. As he always has been.

In early 1979, Bon Scott and AC/DC based themselves at the Newport Hotel in Miami for rehearsals of the Highway To Hell album. Part Three of BON: THE LAST HIGHWAY chronicles AC/DC's time in Miami and Bon's relationship with two women: Holly X and Pattee Bishop. ‘The downtime just bored them. AC/DC didn’t relax well,’ according to the Murray Engleheart biography. Hardly. AC/DC had the time of their lives. In 2015 I got a chance to drive around Miami and see where they were hanging out. What follows is an illustrated extract from the book.

In North Miami Beach I have lunch at New York’s Big Apple Deli on Biscayne Boulevard with Critical Mass lead singer and guitarist Michael Fazzolare, his friend Jackie Smith, Bon Scott's girlfriend Holly X and Neal Mirsky, a former program director of WSHE Miami, the biggest rock station in Florida in the 1970s, and later coordinating producer of MTV and Howard Stern. The placemats have a map of Florida on them with drawings of palm trees, gators, dolphins and Cape Canaveral. Don Henley’s Boys Of Summer is playing. On the map, Jacksonville, where it all started for AC/DC on radio, is just inside the state border, one dot down from Fernandina Beach.

‘To me Jacksonville is like South Georgia rather than North Florida,’ says Mirsky, who moved to Florida in the 1970s from New York. The group agree, telling me it’s still a place where some folk get around in pick-up trucks adorned with Confederate Battle Flags and ‘truck nuts’, or plastic testicles, hanging off rear bumpers. I ask them where the divide is in Florida. Where’s the DMZ line on the placemat between the rednecks and civilisation? The response is unanimous. ‘Anywhere north of Miami.’Mirsky joined WSHE just before Bon died, but interviewed him in May 1979 for WDIZ Orlando. He says American radio since then has changed beyond all recognition.

‘I worked my way up from Sarasota to Orlando to Tampa and then Miami. For decades now listeners have been telling us what they didn’t like about our product: too many commercials, too much repetition, not enough variety. This is the feedback we would get from listeners. But our attitude, not mine personally, was “So? Where the fuck are they gonna go?” And now of course they have so many places to go, whether it’s YouTube, Pandora, SiriusXM. And as the laws change where one company can own hundreds of stations, what used to make us great for listeners was the competition. It was that competition that made us all better, trying to outdo each other, and the listeners benefited. But now your competition is down the hall: you’ve got a ClearChannel cluster with eight, nine radio stations, so it’s really just a matter of divvying up the pie; nobody’s competing. It’s really not about the listeners or the advertisers, it’s about the corporate owners’ stock price. Now it’s just kind of a joke.’

Neal Mirsky's bio at WSHE

Today rock ’n’ roll is just holding on in formats such as Classic Rock and Album Rock/Active Rock (a heavier kind of classic rock with new artists thrown in). Classic Rock has the larger market share.‘There’s your CHR [Contemporary Hit Radio], your top-40 kind of radio, the Katy Perry stations, but really it’s muzak; it’s their muzak. But it’s not about music discovery like it was for us [in the 1970s]. Radio represented music discovery. I grew up just outside of New York City in the ’60s where top-40 radio was at its best. WABC in New York is where I first heard the Stones and The Kinks, The Zombies. And then in the ’70s and ’80s WNEW in New York or WSHE in Miami is where you discovered Elvis Costello or Pink Floyd or whatever.’WSHE was also the first major station in South Florida to play the Bon Scott–led AC/DC.

​‘It sucks because I’m sorry, I don’t care, that was the best version of the band,’ interjects Fazz. ‘The songs were better, it rocked, it was in your face, it was full speed ahead. Don’t you think? Not that it needs to be a contest but it just friggin’ figures, man. The problem is that Bon should have been on friggin’ at least Back In Black, as far as I’m concerned. The discerning listener can tell the difference between who wrote the lyrics. The poor fucker never got to experience it. Bon’s were extremely clever, tongue in cheek, play on words, very clever. BrianJohnson’s just like some guy pandering to however many metaphors for his dick he can come up with. Let’s take a cliché and write a song about it: “I Put The Finger On You”. You know what I mean? “Sink The Pink”. Let’s find a cliché and we’ll build a song around a cliché. It got almost, like, embarrassing to me after a while. Whereas Bon was just like a . . . I don’t know; he was crazy and a genius. And I could never quite figure it out. Because he was like this sweet, personable guy.’

Holly X (left) with Bon, 1977

​I turn to Holly. Why don’t you have photos of you with Bon?‘I don’t have “personal” photos of Bon even though I was taking lots of band photos, although much less by the time I got to New York. I didn’t want him to think I was a “groupie” or in any way impressed by him.’She didn’t take photos of her previous lover, a huge rock star from another massive 1970s rock band, for the same reason. I tell her people might question the veracity of claims she makes for that very reason, and she seems slightly affronted. But Fazz didn’t take pictures either.‘I regret that we didn’t have camera phones then,’ he says. ‘Can you imagine?’‘Oh my gosh,’ says Holly.‘You had to have somebody with a Kodak Instamatic with a flash cube.’ ‘Yeppp.’

Holly photographed in Miami, early 1980s

Another beautiful day in Hollywood Beach

Michael Fazzolare and Critical Mass outside Tight Squeeze, 1979

After lunch we take a tour of Miami in Jackie’s Mercedes, stopping where the Tight Squeeze club used to be on Hollywood Beach, right by the Halifax River (‘The Intercoastal’) and the Atlantic Ocean. The neighbourhood is part of ‘Floribec’, nicknamed thus for its high concentration of Québécois tourists. On first impression it seems to be made up exclusively of low, brightly painted short- and long-term apartments and thick clusters of Tow-Away Zone parking signs. There are signs outside the motels that betray the clientele: COMPLETELY FURNISHED, FRENCH TV.‘You could do whatever you want here,’ says Fazz. ‘Long term, seasonal. The Montreal crowd; French Canadians. Guys my size with ponytails walking around in thongs.’ If ever a man was missing out on his calling in life both as a famous rock musician and character actor in Hollywood, it’s Fazz. In the laidback Miami of 1979, he explains, the Tight Squeeze club was surrounded by shops selling nothing but ‘suntan lotion, sunglasses and thongs’. Nearby there was also a bar called Nick’s, which still operates.‘Is this it?’ he says, pointing to a partly boarded-up building site with a couple of migrant labourers milling about with hammers. ‘This is it! That’s it. Right there. That was the Tight Squeeze.’

Fazzolare outside what was left of the Tight Squeeze, 2015

​There’s nothing to see – the place has been stripped bare to nothing but a shell – but we walk inside anyway. Fazz is pointing in all directions. ‘From here, from that wall, this was Tight Squeeze. Where those boards are going horizontally that’s where the stage was. You walked in and the main entrance was right in the front there. The oval bar was here. Spent many moments with Cliff Williams there. And all the tables and everything were in here. The bathroom was back there. That’s where it all originally happened [laughs] with Henry taking a piss in the bathroom and he looks over and he goes, “I know you. You’re Bon Scott!”’When we get back to the ‘Broadwalk’, as the boardwalk along the beach is called, the heat and humidity is unbearable. It’s a sauna.

Hollywood Beach. A sauna

With Holly X and friends gatecrashing the Newport Hotel

‘I could just sit out here all fucking day,’ says Fazz, furiously perspiring in a black short-sleeved shirt. ‘Over the years it’s all changed. But if you turn your back on this and you look that way,’ he says, gesturing towards the beach and ocean, ‘you’re in 1966.’I point out that Jimmy Buffett’s Margaritaville Beach Resort is being built nearby.‘Well, he’s the patron saint of alcoholic Key West residents.’We go to the Newport Hotel, where Fazz hung out with Bon. For a lark, he knocks on door #617, Cliff Williams’s old room, and tries the handle but no one answers. Instead, to get a feel for the place as it might have been in 1979, we walk into an open room being cleaned down the hall.‘This is different,’ he says. ‘This wasn’t here before. Totally renovated.’Holly, who’s been quiet, pipes up: ‘This is a very bittersweet experience.’ Have these halls changed at all, Fazz?‘Probably a coat of paint.’So, how many times did you come out here to the Newport when AC/DC was in Miami?‘Fuck. Shit. Every night [laughs]. A bunch. I’d say at least a dozen times.’

Fazz outside Room 617

We take the elevator to the lobby and walk out to the beachside pool to see the spot where Bon told Holly she had chartreuse eyes. The Newport building as it was in 1979 is still largely intact but just like the rest of the Sunny Isles strip it’s in the shadow of a residential tower. All the old motel-style places bar The Sahara are being demolished and replaced with glass monstrosities. Donald Trump has seven branded developments between Sunny Isles and Hollywood, ten minutes’ drive north.​‘I love this part of town but I don’t recognise it,’ says Fazz, getting into the car. ‘None of this was here. If you want to recreate that Miami/Sunny Isles [of the ’70s], go to Daytona Beach Shores. Those same hotels are still there.’It’s not all glitz and glamour. At traffic-light stops at major intersections, homeless people and drug addicts shuffle between vehicles, holding up cardboard signs asking for food, money or employment. Holly sees a lot of ‘undocumented’ people in her line of work as a doctor: Mexicans, South Americans, Central Americans, Jamaicans, Haitians, Cubans, Dominicans, Bahamians, even Russians.

Out the back of the Newport.

Where AC/DC rehearsed Highway To Hell

There’s a massive illegal immigration problem in South Florida as well as a synthetic drugs crisis that authorities claim has been contained. We’re certainly seeing some real-time ‘Faces of Meth’ as they walk past the car’s windows. The era of the cocaine cowboys in Miami seems almost innocent in comparison to the devastation being wrought by prescription opioids and cheap but deadly street drugs on America’s towns and cities.‘These poor fuckers,’ says Fazz. ‘There’s a lot of them on these corners here.’‘Oh yeah. There but for the grace of God go I,’ replies Holly.

​When we pull into Criteria, the studio where AC/DC did demos for Highway To Hell, there’s not much to see. It’s now called The Hit Factory Criteria Miami and a very high wire fence has been erected around it, keeping out intruders. The nearby Musicians Studio Rentals, the rehearsal space where Bon heard Teddy Rooney say ‘Shazbot Nanu Nanu’ (Bon's last words in ‘Night Prowler'), has become a mechanic’s workshop. The sign out front reads: VANTAGE MOTOR WORKS, FINE VINTAGE & CONTEMPORARY MOTOR CAR SERVICE.

Driving out to Key Biscayne

Half an hour’s drive south in Key Biscayne, Holly’s parents’ house has also disappeared. When it was built in 1960, there were no other houses around it. The floor plans are still held at the University of Florida but the original house has been knocked down, replaced by a modern two-storey mansion. Bougainvillea enshrouds the garage and there’s a huge black wrought-iron gate out front.‘Key Biscayne is all cocaine money now,’ she says. ‘You can’t even see the water any more from the street. Billionaires’ row.’We knock on the door and it gets answered by a Russian called Evgeny. He’s very pale and wearing a Hawaiian shirt. I introduce myself and tell him I’m writing a book about AC/DC. Evgeny tells me he’s in real estate back in St Petersburg and this place is a holiday house. Not a bad holiday house. I ask if we can go around the back.

A vacant lot in Key Biscayne

The view from the backyard

‘Yeah, okay, sure, no problem,’ he smiles and gestures for us to walk around the side to the pool by the water’s edge. His wife comes out of the house with a book about Key Biscayne. The view that greets us is incredible, like something out of Miami Vice. There’s a speedboat in the distance. Stone pavers around the pool have replaced what used to be a natural beach. A small wooden jetty juts out into a turquoise-blue bay. There’s an iguana on one of the steps of the pool. This is where Holly grew up and where Bon would spend some of the most important moments of the last year of his life. He ate at the local yacht club with Holly. He’d go boating with Angus Young, Malcolm Young and Holly, wearing Holly’s cutoff shorts. It’s also a long way from where he died, in a junkie’s car on a grey day in East Dulwich, London. How things might have turned out differently had he never gone to England.

One weekend in May 2015 I decided to go to the Sunday service of the Bethel Gospel Assembly, a Pentecostal church on East 120th Street in East Harlem, to hear some music. Bon Scott himself did the same thing while touring in America.Said his Miami girlfriend Pattee Bishop: ‘We went to church once, and he cried; Bon wanted to go in, and we got caught up in the service [laughs]. I haven’t been to church since, but he liked the music of the singers.’Inside the church, Bishop Carlton T. Brown was talking about alcohol, specifically wine, and how the Bible teaches Christians to be thankful for everything. Yet, he explained, it’s hard to be thankful sometimes because life can be so cruel because of poverty or the emotional hardship that comes with separation, divorce or bereavement.So we drink wine to forget our pain. What we should instead be doing, he told the enraptured congregation, is fill our souls with ‘the Holy Spirit’.

On a highway to hell.

​Now Bon Scott was hardly a religious man and would never wean himself off the bottle but I like to think he left behind not just a great body of work but a holy spirit of his own – and I'm not talking about the unexplained spectral force that visited Brian Johnson during the writing of ‘You Shook Me all Night Long.'This spirit of Bon remains a very potent thing, enough that truckers paint their cabs with his likeness and tattoo parlours around the world stay in business inking his face on to arms, legs, bums, chests, backs – just about any available patch of skin.February 19, 2018 marks the 38th anniversary of Bon's death and there has been the usual flurry of Bon–related happenings to mark the occasion. Each year the legend – and myth – of Bon only seems to get bigger to the point where the real man now bears little relation to the idea of Bon many fans have created in their heads, mostly from sanitised accounts of his life from people who knew him in Australia.

Šamorín, Slovakia.

There have been a cast of people who knew Bon who have written books – Mark Evans (Dirty Deeds), Mary Renshaw (Live Wire), Irene Thornton (My Bon Scott), Michael Browning (Dog Eat Dog) – and told their Bon stories, or those individuals who have been interviewed for books by biographers from Clinton Walker to Murray Engleheart to Mick Wall.In early 2016, more interestingly, a young West Australian writer called J.P. Quinton released a ‘historical fiction’ about Bon’s life called Bad Boy Boogie. It was based, in large part, on the reminiscences of Bon’s muse, the late Silver Smith (a woman I got to interview in Bon: The Last Highway before she died, thanks to Quinton) and Bon’s own letters that had been reproduced in Walker’s 1994 biography.Silver was working on her own book about Bon but tragically it would go unfinished. She sent me two stories she had written before she died. I learned more about him from reading those than I did from some books recently published about him. If anyone really knew Bon best, it was Silver Smith. Anyone who questions this doesn't know anything about the life of Ronald Belford Scott.

The late Vince Lovegrove, Bon’s bandmate from The Valentines and a close friend, also left behind a wealth of anecdotal material about Bon and tried to get a film made about him. (Other feature projects about Bon have been mooted over the years, but nothing has ever come of them apart from articles on Blabbermouth.)Mount Lofty Rangers keyboardist Peter Head, who I met at his flat in Marrickville, Sydney, before commencing work on Bon: The Last Highway, was co-producing his own documentary about Bon and has already released some re-recordings with Bon’s vocals taped in 1973 (‘Round And Round And Round’, ‘Carey Gully’).

Head still had the original Sony PR-150 quarter-inch reel-to-reel tape and Bon’s handwritten lyrics to two songs, ‘Clarissa’ and ‘Been Up In The Hills Too Long’. It was a powerful thing to hold a piece of paper in my hand on which Bon had written original lyrics.

In my book I wanted to reevaluate Bon as a musician, a rock star and a human being. I also wanted to try to understand why he made some of the decisions he made, including the fateful one that would take his life, without going to the usual gang of suspects who have made great hay publicly out of having called Bon a friend, blood relation or acquaintance. They offer little of value to a biographer. Those who knew him best of all have chosen to keep their privacy.Said Fraternity’s drummer John Freeman perspicaciously in Walker’s Highway To Hell: ‘I don’t think anybody ever saw the real Bon. I don’t think Bon ever knew the real Bon. That was his trouble.’There is some truth to that statement. Hopefully Bon: The Last Highway goes some way to clearing up who he really was and dispelling some of the nonsense about his life that is out there and shows no sign of abating.

What does find almost universal agreement is how important Bon was to AC/DC artistically yet he was never acknowledged at the time for the quality of his work. I certainly believe there was some underlying impatience, insecurity or dissatisfaction in Bon. Lovegrove hinted at this in a piece for Melbourne’s Sunday Age: ‘At his core was a burning ambition to be loved, to be famous, and to be a rock star.’ Angus Young confirmed this was true: ‘He told Malcolm once, “If ever I make it big and I’m going to be famous and they want me to do a solo album I’ll call it Bonfire.” His actual words were: “When I’m a fucking big shot.”’But he was a complete contradiction.Said Lovegrove: ‘I loved the paradox of his wild, wild spirit and his beautiful calm soul. On the one hand he was a time bomb waiting to blow up, on the other, a serene, gentle man whose greatest asset was the ability to give friendship and loyalty and, eventually, write words that rank among the best in rock.'

Indelibly stamped.

Yet, even though he has gone on to claim rock immortality, not everyone remembers Bon so warmly. Ted Nugentis one such individual: ‘Jimi Hendrix didn’t have discipline… Keith Moon and Bon Scott didn’t have any discipline. And I don’t know how that party’s going, but it doesn’t look very good from here.’Nugent repeats pretty much the same thing in his book, God, Guns And Rock’N’Roll, name-checking Hendrix, Moon and Bon as casualties on ‘a stupefyingly long list of the hippest idiots that ever lived. And died.’Bon was no idiot but he did make some very poor choices of his own free will. So to a degree Nugent is correct: had Bon exercised more discipline he might still be here. But he chose to live his life the way he did, with no apology. For that reason no one else but Bon can be blamed for his death. It's time people stopped looking for scapegoats and accepted the man's faults.

Every AC/DC fan remembers Bon in their own way and so they should. Our relationship to his music is ultimately individual and personal. But my sincere hope this February 19 is that those who make a very public ceremony of memorialising him take some time to finally, after 38 years, think about how other people's lives were adversely impacted by Bon's personal recklessness. As Silver says in the book, ‘He wouldn’t care about the consequences and how it would affect other people.’Alistair Kinnear, she says, was ‘really traumatised’ by Bon’s death, while she and her friend Joe Fury were virtually forced into hiding.‘Joe and I never did an unkind thing to anyone, so how do you deal with the whole world being told you are some kind of evil creatures by people who don’t even know you, or worse, people who do? We have families, too.’Silver, Alistair and Joe didn’t deserve to spend the next few decades effectively living on the run, hiding away from the press and vengeful AC/DC fans.It's easy to forget Bon was only 33 when he died; he was a young man with one failed marriage under his belt. He’d yet to gain some of the wisdom that comes in our 40s.But at the end of the day he was still an adult. Let's start thinking of him – and judging his actions – as one.

Legendary British band UFO toured with AC/DC in America during the Bon Scott era and got to see the Australian band's personal dynamics up close. In fact, UFO shared more bills in the States with AC/DC than any other band during the late 1970s period: Missouri, Ohio, Tennessee, West Virginia, Wisconsin, Georgia, Pennsylvania, Iowa, New York, Illinois and more. When they first met in Kansas City, UFO had just released their classic fourth album, Lights Out, described in a press ad by their record company Chrysalis as ‘a bit of a shitkicker’.Guitarist Paul Chapman, who replaced Michael Schenker ​that year, remembers the group being difficult to socialise with.‘They were very much a touring bubble,’ he says. ‘They’re impenetrable. You walk past them on a plane and you feel it. There’s nine of them [band and crew] sat in a square or eight of them or something like that: the impenetrable bubble. It was kind of weird.'

His bandmate guitarist/keyboardist Paul Raymond concurs: ‘It was only really Bon that partied with us... I don’t think UFO had any influence on Bon, he liked a drink, so did we – we didn’t lead him astray.’Meanwhile, bassist Pete Way recalls Bon ‘moaning about having to travel by plane’ but there always being a positive rapport between the two groups: ‘AC/DC and UFO were a good team, you know. We had our own tour coaches but going back to the early tours, we did them in planes. Obviously if we were going to the same venue we would use the same flight, same hotel. We’d generally end up in one another’s rooms.’He well remembers the rivalry between AC/DC and fellow Atlantic Records act Foreigner.‘On AC/DC’s first American tour, which was UFO’s second American tour, we did a few shows together. Foreigner was headlining, we were special guest and AC/DC opened and of course they didn’t get any of the trimmings that people would expect. It was made more difficult for them.

‘AC/DC played with Blue Öyster Cult and the same thing: no monitors and that; and they held grudges those boys at the time, particularly Angus [Young] and Malcolm [Young]. When the tables turned they made sure that they did exactly what they got [sic] coming to them.’Did you dislike Foreigner? They were quite successful in America from the very beginning.‘To be honest with you, I would have that conversation with Angus. I think “Hot Blooded” was the song they had out at the time, we were on tour with them, I used to go and eat something or hang out with Angus a lot after the shows and I mentioned that and he went, “Mehhhhh. Fucking cabaret band” [laughs]’

‘I don't think UFO had any influence on Bon, he liked a drink, so did we – we didn't lead him astray.'– Paul Raymond

Angus might have been cocky but ultimately the cockiness was well placed. Way only has praise for what they achieved.‘AC/DC put 100 per cent – no – they put 200 per cent into what they were doing. They believed in themselves. And I tell you what: nobody could tell them what to do. This is what we are. We’re AC/DC. This is the way we play. This is what you get. And if you don’t like it, don’t come to the show, don’t buy the album.’Raymond agrees.‘There was definitely a competitive edge between [UFO and AC/DC] and eventually they became impossible to follow, which is when they became a headline act in their own right. Pete and Angus were the showmen of each band and both bands had the attitude that they were the best. I think both bands had a lot to say and were at the right age – it was youthful cockiness.’

​San Francisco band Yesterday & Today (later Y&T) joined AC/DC for a string of shows in the midst of a blisteringly hot Texas summer in July 1978. They were booked by local promoter Jack Orbin, who organised AC/DC’s first Texas shows in 1977.‘Jack took us under his wing and booked us many times throughout Texas,’ says lead singer and guitarist Dave Meniketti. ‘We had become quite popular, much to our shock, because of a DJ on KMAC/KISS FM, Joe Anthony, who played us religiously. He basically "broke" us in that part of Texas. Jack saw the popularity of the band because of the radio play and started to book us around Texas for quite a few years.’‘That tour in Texas with AC/DC was a very special,’ adds their late rhythm guitarist Joey Alves, who passed away in early 2017. ‘I had been a fan of the band from the beginning so naturally I was excited to be a part of it. I was instantly impressed by their strong performance each night.

Alves (left) and Meniketti

‘Summertime in Texas is very hot but the heat never slowed down AC/DC’s intense show. Towards the end of each show Angus Young would go out into the audience on top Bon's shoulders playing his heart out on his guitar. Needless to say the crowds loved it.‘AC/DC was a big influence on Yesterday & Today, especially with their live sound that they got each night. It was bigger than all the others and we had played with most. I would go so far as to study Malcolm's and Angus's amp settings. Dave and I would stand in the back of the arenas during their sound checks just to see what we could learn. And we learned a lot.’

‘Bon's death was a total shock to us. While we knew he was a hard partying kind of guy that lived life full with gusto, I don't think we ever gave it a thought as to how it could lead to his demise.'– Dave Meniketti

What did Yesterday & Today observe of the dynamic between AC/DC’s rhythm guitarist and strongman leader, Malcolm Young and its hard-living lead singer, Bon?‘We were so young and impressionable at the time that I don’t think any of us observed interactions between the members as it pertained to Bon and Malcolm,’ says Meniketti. ‘If we did, I don’t remember anything going down. Just the partying part and the band performances, outside of a few other things that we observed about the road manager trying to gather all the DC guys after the shows. You know, typical stuff that happens on the road.

Thanks to Jack Orbin for the ticket

​‘But years later when we toured for two months with AC/DC on the For Those About To Rock tour in the UK and Europe, there was no question we saw the presence of Malcolm in his band environment. It was put to us by our manager that Malcolm was the guy you didn’t want to piss off or we would be off the tour immediately. When the guys would invite us into their room after their performances, sitting down to talk and eat their after show meals (on that two-month tour), we could really get a sense of the band dynamic. It was sort of obvious to us that Malcolm seemed to rule the day.'

​As for Bon, he left an impression even if the memories are fading.‘I just wish I had the presence of mind to really pay attention and remember more things about him as he was hanging with us,’ says Meniketti. ‘Time has eroded much of the details, as we were so young and it all happened so fast in a three-day span that it sort of became a bit of a blur to me. Our heads were in the clouds as we started our career and this just seemed to happen in a flash.‘His death was a total shock to all of us. While we knew he was a hard partying kind of guy that lived life with full gusto, I don't think we ever gave it a thought as to how it could lead to his demise. We were somewhat used to guys around us that partied like there was no tomorrow, so he was not completely unusual to us. When you're young and crazy you feel invincible. But I can say without hesitation that his awesome gritty voice, unusual swagger on stage, and fun partying kind of personality off stage, made him an instant legend amongst our band members and crew.’

After writing a piece this week on the issue of who really played bass on Powerage, I received a message from Andrew Paschalidis, an old colleague from my sportswriting days in Australia. Andy was one of the pioneers of soccer broadcasting in the 1980s at SBS Television. He's also a major AC/DC fan.​​‘I had the most amazing experience in 1978,' he wrote. ‘I was afforded the opportunity to visit Albert Studios with three school friends one Saturday afternoon. AC/DC was in the midst of creating the song “Rock 'N' Roll Damnation”. George Young was in one studio on bass, Angus Young another and Malcolm Young another. Phil Rudd was there as well. Bon Scott was on the sofa writing lyrics with an acoustic guitar by his side. At the time I really didn't grasp the significance of that day being a starry-eyed 16-year-old. Biggest regret is losing a photo I had taken with Bon!​​‘Fortunately I took a stack of other photos of my friends that day. It was the most amazing experience making pots of tea for Bon. Harry Vanda and George Young were amazing to watch. Creative juices flowing. What an experience!'You can enjoy images from the recording session below (including George in an Angus tee). The boy in the photos is Tony Fasulo. All photos by Andrew Paschalidis. It's great to finally hear the story behind these pictures. Thanks, Andy!